Lifetime Achievement Awards – IFFCOLOMBO 2015

Aruna Vasudev

Critic, author, editor, painter, maker of documentaries, Trustee and member of numerous panels, committees and advisory boards, Aruna Vasudev is, above all, a torch-bearer of Asian cinema. Founder-editor of Cinemaya: The Asian Film Quarterly and founder of Cinefan, The Festival of Asian Cinema, Aruna has a zest for life and friends and an appetite for the arts, literature and travel. Throughout this trajectory, she has been showered with numerous national and international awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award here in Colombo. That she can pack so much into every day of her life and still make ample room for friends, spare time for her family, remain a bon vivant, be a gracious and generous hostess, keep an open house, mentor and nourish young minds, and continue to dream of new endeavours – all of these are special attributes that have added rich hues to her years even as they have touched the lives of those who have been by her side in her journey. She was a jury member in the 1989 Locarno Film Festival. She has edited or co-edited 13 books and one book she translated from French into English (Jean-Claude Carriere’s A la recherche du Mahabharata – In Search of the Mahabharata: Notes of Travels in India with Peter Brook 1982-1985) were done side by side with her work on the magazine.

Co-editor of ‘Being and Becoming: The Cinemas of Asia’ (2002) that became the first book to offer a comprehensive overview of the history and aesthetics of around 30 Asian countries, Aruna Piloted several projects including the publication of Kenji Mizoguchi and the Art of Japanese Cinema by Tadao Sato, the first book in English that gives the reader an insider’s view of the oeuvre of this great master. Her PhD thesis was published as a book titled “Liberty and Licence in the Indian Cinema” in 1979. As a director and producer of documentaries, she has some 20 films to her credit. These were made between 1967 and 1979 for Swedish Television, the Canadian International Development Agency, Belgian Television, War on Want, London, and in India for the Films Division and Doordarshan.

Adoor Gopalakrishnan

Adoor Gopalakrishnan is one among the few of the most outstanding filmmakers in Indian cinema. He has never compromised with market pressures or audience demands for mainstream entertainment. Yet, he has held on to his own language, style, approach, story and plot and is a name to reckon with on the map of International Cinema. He has made relatively few films during his long span as filmmaker. His first film Swayamvaram (1972) came ten years after he graduated from the FTII, Pune. It was the second Malayalam film after Chemeen to have won the National Award. Followed Kodiyettam (1979), Elipathayam (1981), Mukhamukham (1984), Anantaram (1987), Mathilukal (1989), Vidheyan (1993), Kathapurushan (1995, Nizhalkuthu (2002), Naalu Pennugal (2007) and Oru Pennum Randaanum (2008). Adoor is a pioneer in establishing Chalachithra Sahakarana Sangham and Chithralekha Film Society which was the first film society in Kerala aimed at production, distribution and exhibition of films in the co-operative sector. These movements triggered a fresh wave of films, called “art films”.

Adoor’s reluctance to identify himself with an ideology, his explorations of the individual, often on a one-to-one basis that spans several layers of the human experience, his insistence on the autonomy of the form in cinema, distinguish him from most of his peers, and often make him a subject of controversy, principally because he belongs to Kerala, forever a volatile political state with polarized agendas preached and practiced by a segmented audience.